Thessaloniki Diary : Report from the 1999 Thessaloniki Film Festival

Dear Diary,

Life getting on my nerves today. At the airport, in the men's room, walked past a female attendant mopping the floor just inside the entrance ; went to the urinals - other end of the room, way out of sight from where she was - but she rushed after me - middle-aged, with a rustic, unsubtle face - caught me in mid-unzip, yelling "Excuse me! Can't you see me working here? How about a little consideration?". "Well it's not like you have to watch, you know," I mumbled, retreating into one of the stalls. Later, on the plane, watched discreetly as the guy in front of me read the "Cyprus Mail", cover to cover, every word - except my TV column at the back, which he barely glanced at. Transit in Athens, loud haggard woman on a cell-phone: "I'm a wreck, I'm fucked up, I'm ready for the madhouse. If I go on like this I'll either end up killing myself or someone else. If I went to a shrink right now he'd take one look and have me committed". Storms over Greece. Turbulence. Started Tolstoy's "Resurrection" - hero's a man who's lost his youthful ideals, dropped out of a solid job to pursue artistic dabblings, turned out to have less talent than he thought. All very ominous...

I was tired when I wrote this / So sue me if it goes too fast

Thessaloniki (Salonica, if you must) is a mellow kind of place ; I feel better already. Partly it's the setting, the sweep of shallow bay ringed with mountains : you can stand on the waterfront, inches away from lapping wavelets, and gaze out at the arc of land, hazy-grey against the deep-blue bulge of sea. And partly it's the geography, closer to the Balkans than to Athens in the south, imbuing everything with a bit of the old Slavonic fatalism even when the city sprawls alarmingly and the traffic can add half an hour to any journey. Little gypsy boys dart among the cars at traffic-lights - cheeky, filthy, often barefoot, with the fixed, slightly demented smiles of those who have little to smile about. College students crowd the promenade coffee-shops, chattering over their frappés. Faded buildings sag like middle-aged belles. In November it's all dirty skies and beige, clotted light. Angelopoulos weather.

Mr. A - or "the other Theo", as I like to call him - is also the President of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, though it seems to be mostly a case of lending his name, seeing as the Fest is run by the tall, raffish-looking Michel Demopoulos, a former film-critic. He's apparently a charmer, and certainly managed to charm a bunch of high-profile guests into attending, not to mention getting his hands on a first-class slate of movies. (This is undoubtedly the most prestigious film festival I've ever been to - though I guess I should say more prestigious, seeing as I'd previously only been to last year's fun but decidedly minor Athens Fest.) It wasn't always thus : this was the 40th Thessaloniki Film Festival but in reality only the 8th or 9th, seeing as the Fest was devoted exclusively to (gulp) Greek cinema till the early 90s, when Demopoulos was brought in to make it international. Even now, most of the attention - media and otherwise - was focused on the Greek-language section : I was probably the only journalist attending who didn't watch a single Greek movie (mostly because the other hacks had already seen the stuff I did watch at Cannes and Venice ; isn't it a great life being a film-critic?).

The result, for me, was the best of all possible worlds. I watched 32 movies (out of a possible 130), not counting a couple of side-trips to commercial cinemas for THE SIXTH SENSE and GHOST DOG. They included many of the year's must-sees, all the films everybody's talking about. I went to a world-class festival - but without the feelings of smallness and helplessness, all the oppressive pomp I'd have had to put up with at Cannes or Venice or Toronto. Getting a Press card was a doddle. Getting interviews was simple - there weren't that many journalists there, and everyone was more interested in the Greek stuff anyway (among the people I could have interviewed, but chose not to skip movie-watching time for : Catherine Breillat, Marisa Paredes, Denis Lavant, Léa Pool, Fred Kelemen, Amos Gitai, Miki Manojlovic, Severine Caneele from L'HUMANITE, Elaine Cassidy from FELICIA'S JOURNEY). Everything was loose, unpretentious. Hell, I didn't even have to wear a tie to the Opening Ceremony.

Speaking of which...

Opening ceremony. Nino Rota Ensemble plays movie themes (incl. an unfortunate operetta version of "Singin' in the Rain", the diva doing an unconvincing little hop on "I'm hap-py again"). Audience not especially film-related, solid Thessaloniki citizenry mostly, the great'n good. Everyone seems to know each other. Immediately notice a guy in front of me - short, fiftysomething, with a scrunched-up miser's face. Absurd spiral of hair combed to cover up bald pate. Dressed so badly he can only be an eccentric millionaire. He takes an aisle seat, draping his jacket firmly over the seat next to him as if waiting for someone, wife or girlfriend. "Who'd have him?" I muse unkindly. "Ragged little leprechaun". The answer of course is no-one - he just hates human contact and, when finally forced to relinquish the adjoining seat, fidgets uncomfortably for a few minutes, leaning away from his neighbour, then leaves the theatre altogether.

(Addendum : I actually saw him quite often in the days that followed - though never in an audience - striding around the Festival area with a purposeful air. My guess is he's a Greek producer / money-man of some sort, and maybe he was actually waiting for his wife that night, and decided to leave when she didn't show up. But I think I prefer the version I first imagined ; print the legend, I always say...)

I've been first and last / Look at how the time goes past

It's not easy being David Lynch. Even if you missed the pun in the title of the Fest's opening film, THE STRAIGHT STORY (58) (82 - second viewing) - the (true) story of Alvin Straight, a frail septuagenarian who travelled across the Midwest by lawnmower to visit his ailing brother - the very first scene has Lynch working overtime to evoke his trademark world (Angelo Badalamenti's suggestive score, a too-perfect image of house and lawn, even the sound of a sprinkler echoing the knotted garden hose at the beginning of BLUE VELVET) so he can subvert, or more accurately ignore it. This is a straight (not a weird) story - and, for a while, looks like being the director's finest, tapping a deeply moving intimations-of-mortality vein I don't think I've seen since THE DEAD a decade ago : Alvin is on nodding terms with Death, feels its presence in the air. He's not sad exactly when he overhears news of his brother's stroke, wearily resigned more than anything - Death showing his face again (the subtle crumpling of Richard Farnsworth's face is a great moment). He knows it's coming for him too, that he can't cheat it by embarking on his epic journey, but he can at least meet it with dignity, having made peace with himself and his brother : as he puttered off on his absurd contraption I could feel the lump building in my throat.

But the film goes wrong : the hitch-hiker episode - horribly misguided and utterly unnecessary (since it could easily have made its point just through Alvin's calm certitude, without the family-values lecture and bundle-of-sticks business) - knocks the wind out of it and it never quite recovers, especially as it's perched on the edge of caricature to begin with, small-town rubes asking what's the number for 911 and brightening up at the mention of Wisconsin ("a real party state"). It's a fine line between sincerity and self-parody, especially with this kind of cornball dialogue ("Storm's comin' in." "Yup.") ; by the end everyone was starting to remind me of The Stranger in THE BIG LEBOWSKI, and the final scene, the brothers' laconic meeting, felt more like a shaggy-dog story than the grace-note obviously intended. Farnsworth's rheumy face is indeed a marvel, though, and the film would be worth it just as a record of his grizzled persona : as someone says - and Lynch concurs, perhaps a little too uncritically - "It's been a genuine pleasure having you here, Alvin."

(Four years later: second viewing, total transformation. Still not entirely sure what happened, but the theory I'm trying to avoid is that I've become a total softie in the interim, happily swallowing cornball nostalgia with reactionary overtones - and the theory I prefer is that I wasn't wrong the first time, I just looked at it solely on a script level, without filtering through Lynch's sensibility. The opening sequence is the key in my opinion, starting off high and God-like then very deliberately craning down to the level of human beings; it's as though the film's director were God Him/Her/Itself, casting an amused eye on human life but keeping an Olympian distance from the goings-on (those shots of star-filled sky are also kind of a giveaway), which of course negates any sort of didacticism (cf. my previous comments on the hitch-hiker episode). The film obviously endorses Alvin but there's no sense of 'everyone must be like Alvin' - all we can say is that these values worked for this particular man in this place and time; human life is too obviously picayune to elevate him to any kind of role model, and what's so deeply moving is that his cross-country journey is so insignificant yet so important (to him) at the same time. What previously seemed incongruously Lynchian touches - the deer lady, the twins, the eccentric small-towners - now make perfect sense as indicators of Life's basic absurdity (so small, so silly); what previously put me off, Alvin's imperturbable quality, now comes across as simple humility, knowing he's just a man and not even a very good one but at least he can square his account before he dies. There's also the small matter of Richard Farnsworth giving one of the greatest performances in the history of movies (matched in the Old Codger Dept. only by Carlo Battisti in UMBERTO D); that he lost the Oscar to Kevin Spacey's smug baby-boomer in AMERICAN BEAUTY is one of those symbolic ironies that'll make a great footnote in some thesis on the Decline of Hollywood someday.)

I'll tell you what I want / What I really, really want

The opening ceremony ran late, as opening ceremonies always do, so I missed the opening 15 minutes of ROMANCE (51) - which may be why I was so bewildered by this (over-)intellectualised flesh-fest. Is it meant to be funny, or pretentious? What exactly does the heroine want - power or submission, true love or impersonal sex? On the one hand she's obviously too much woman for her flaccid boyfriend, needs a passion he's unable to supply (just like all women, and all men?) ; on the other hand she needs him, sleeps around (she says) to attract his attention. needs the security of a monogamous relationship (just like all women, and all men?). Director Breillat seems to think she can answer All Of The Above and get away with it (because her heroine is Woman, and therefore Complicated) : the film's thrust is broadly feminist - closest thing to a villain of the piece turning out to be the unsavoury Robert, who brags of his many conquests and tries to interest our girl in a bit of bondage - but a pretty half-assed kind if you'll pardon the expression, happy to see women as victims, superior beings and / or their own worst enemies.

Played absolutely straight it might've been insufferable, but it's possible to discern glimpses of humour, or at least self-awareness, as in the post-bondage dinner scene or the casting of porn superstar Rocco Siffredi (whose appearance drew a round of applause) and his Dirk Diggler-sized member - or was it a symbol of the inadequacy of masculine virility (or something)? And what about that dialogue? "Your penis is like a bird," observes our heroine, cradling the little fellow, "only it has no wings". "Physical love is the meeting of the trivial and the divine," intones the voice-over. What to make of this strange, borderline-dreadful movie? Hard to say - but it does have its moments : the extended sequence where Robert ties the heroine up in real-time, clinically, methodically, with what sounds like an early Moog synth playing elevator-music in the background - feeling (I assume deliberately) like the shoddiest kind of 80s porn movie - is among the creepiest things I've seen in years, ugly and unnerving and truly pornographic. But in a good way.

Push me up against the wall / Young Kentucky girl in a push-up bra

This was certainly the festival for it (sex, that is) - or maybe all festivals are like this, and I was just surprised because I'm used to the commercial dictates of clean-living Hollywood. Then again, maybe it is actually a trend, especially seeing how similar the sex was from film to film - hardly ever sensual, always 'raw' and unadorned : maybe it's an offshoot of the current obsession with 'realism' (on which more later). Or maybe, given that film-makers are almost always men, it has something to do with the whole male-insecurity business, the fear of emasculation in an increasingly female-dominated (read "equal") world, as reflected in THE FULL MONTY, FIGHT CLUB etc. ; certainly, men were passive or dominated surprisingly often, sexually speaking. The heroes of HUMAN TRAFFIC and GREGORY'S TWO GIRLS needed a woman to guide them along ; the hero of SURRENDER DOROTHY actually got turned into a woman ; and the laid-back hero of the highly enjoyable PRAISE (62) can pretty much take sex or leave it - unlike the girl he hooks up with, who needs and thrives on it.

This is good dirty fun mostly, with some good dirty blues on the soundtrack by the suitably-named Dirty Three ; and it looks good too, hot orange light around rich colours. But it's best of all a celebration of physical joys and vices (usually the same thing), doing things even when you know they're bad for you, and a fond look at the details of a relationship - playing Scrabble, sharing a bath, talking frankly about everything from bad posture to wanking techniques. Like many Australian comedies it's about losers, the marginal and hideous ("Everyone I know is ugly," admits the heroine), but it has neither the broad strokes nor the self-indulgent campiness of something like MURIEL'S WEDDING. It's sharper, clearer, more perceptive in its depiction of a basically antagonistic love affair, and it grows steadily in emotional complexity, funny at first then tough as well, and finally tender - unlike GIRLS' NIGHT OUT (54) (another movie with the emphasis on sex), which was likeable but didn't really seem to go much of anywhere. Liked the picture of Korean yuppies, drinking Heinekens while Satchmo sings "Blueberry Hill" in the background, but their problems (mainly amorous) didn't seem to merit director Im Sang-Soo's you-are-there aesthetic - we see the characters in bed, on the toilet, clipping toenails, taking off their makeup, but it all feels a bit affected and unnecessary : you could say it lacks a spiritual dimension (maybe a dash of that nameless urban anomie in the other Sang-Soo's DAY A PIG FELL INTO THE WELL). And the visuals are puzzling, unless there's some pattern that I missed : we start off with muted colours, near-sepia surroundings, pale skin tones, then move on to hotter colours, reds and greens coming in - but not in any rigorous way (there's a couple of muted scenes even near the end). Style for the sake of it was my impression, ditto the busy camerawork and occasional jump-cuts ; lots of exposed flesh, though - a reminder that the other Korean film, Jang Sun-Woo's notorious LIES, was unfortunately absent from the Festival.

Je t'aime / Moi non plus

All of which made A PORNOGRAPHIC AFFAIR (73) rather ironic, given its title - for this silky-smooth two-hander was just about the only film on offer with a modicum of restraint, not least in refusing to divulge the kink-in-common that gets Nathalie Baye and Sergi Lopez together in the first place (via a personal ad in a men's magazine). Why won't you tell us what it was? asks an off-screen interviewer, supposedly after the end of the affair. I'm not being prudish, replies Lopez, it's just - well he can't tell us that either, he admits, leaving it to the film to imply that mystery, remoteness, a bit of distance is the most potent of aphrodisiacs. 'Deviant' sex behind closed doors keeps the couple aflame ; 'normal' sex, shared with us eager voyeurs, takes them from "vous" to "tu", and hastens the end of their relationship. "It almost disgusts me," says Lopez ; "It's even better that way - when it's almost disgusting," replies Baye, and their immaculate performances go a long way towards refuting the suspicion of over-slickness (A MAN AND A WOMAN for the sober-styled 90s, trip-hop replacing Francis Lai). The film has the quiet, wistful dignity of something like THE CLOCK - which I was reminded of when Lopez loses Baye and suddenly realises he knows absolutely nothing about her - a vulnerability peeking out from behind the Eurochic. It's a class act and a fine movie, even if it raises no particularly vital questions - except perhaps "What kind of fantasy could result in soreness to a woman's thighs and the small of a man's back?..."

Couple at breakfast : he looks neat and self-satisfied - moustache, glasses, face pinched and fastidious - like the man our heroine is supposed to marry in a Merchant-Ivory movie. She looks tired and harried. He reads the paper, she scurries to the buffet to get food for both of them, the Little Woman. "There were sweets on the buffet as well". "Well," not looking up from his paper, "you go ahead and have some if you like". "I didn't get you any". "I don't want any, you go ahead". "I didn't get you any because -" "Fine, fine" "I didn't get you any because I know you never eat them". "Right, right". Reads paper out loud for the remainder of the meal, making comments - "Listen to this ...Unbelievable" - laughing heartily. She doesn't listen.

Same table, different day. Some Festival folk at my hotel (not too many ; most are staying at the classier places), and there's a couple right here. One guy's Greek - shaggy, young, John Lennon glasses - the other (older, silvery-haired) sounds Arab, maybe Egyptian ; my guess is the Arab guy's a film-maker, the Greek his Festival chaperone. They're talking movies, in English - a language neither one of them can speak, which is OK when they're talking about Fritz Lang's M, but then they move on to another film, a recent cop flick. They think they're talking about the same movie ; in fact one of them's talking about Cruising, the early-80s William Friedkin, and the other about Bad Lieutenant. The Arab nods at the Greek's broken English, totally lost, then looks puzzled when he catches a word he recognises : Al Pacino. "No Al Pacino," he says vigorously. "Abel Ferrara." And now it's the Greek's turn to look puzzled. But they sort it out eventually.

"The World Is Not Enough" might've been the Festival's motto ; film-producing countries jostled for a place on the program, though it was apparently a lot more exotic last year, when a Spotlight On Asia produced glimpses of the Thai and Filipino cinemas, among others. This year's Spotlight was on the dreaded (and worshipped) Portuguese cinema, from the country that brought you those slow, slit-your-wrists (albeit rather lovely) dirges known as fados ; all the usual suspects - De Oliveira, Monteiro, Paulo Rocha - had films on show, but I'm embarrassed to say I didn't see a single one, disqualifying De Oliveira's AMOR DE PERDICAO on running-time grounds (245 mins.) and deciding at the last moment that I couldn't face Monteiro's RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YELLOW HOUSE at 11 p.m. after nine films in two days.

Come down off the cross / We can use the wood

I did however see Fred Kelemen's NIGHTFALL (64) which, though German-speaking, was co-produced by a Portuguese company, seems to have been shot partly in Lisbon and certainly features a bunch of fados (an overdose of fados? a suicide-pact of fados?) on its soundtrack, and very lovely they are too. The film itself has been widely derided ("mittel-European angst by the numbers" - Time Out London), and I knew even as I watched it that this is exactly the kind of movie that's brought the European industry to its knees : two and a half hours of nocturnal wanderings, with pretentious dialogue ("Our pain must be transformed into redemption") replacing plot ; "poetry is a part of reality," explained Mr. Kelemen at his Press conference, adding that he shoots his own films because "otherwise I would be like a painter who gives his brush to someone else, describing what he should paint". The analogy may be flawed, but it's certainly apt : "painterly" is the word for this film which, whatever its flaws, featured some of the Fest's most astonishing images. Kelemen deals in urban grunge, pale faces amid grainy green-greyness, but it's what he does with the frame that's so wondrous. One shot has our hero in repose on a bridge, horizontally across the frame bathed in blue moonlight while, in the top-left corner, a girl dances sinuously, seen through the window of a house amid orange lamplight : it's as though he's dreaming, and she is his dream. Another tableau breaks the shot up into pools of light, a woman hurrying down an ill-lit pavement in one, a couple of drunks staggering away from camera in the other - it feels like the various parts of the frame are pulling away from each other. These are dreamlike images, and - like most films taking place over the course of a single night - the coming of dawn jolts you, as if from the tenebrous depths of another world. Which is not to ignore the risible moments (overheard in a bar : "I've just raped my budgie"), or to condone the general pretentiousness, merely to say that the film works well in a festival context, especially at a mid-morning Press screening : even at worst it's rather restful, just sit back and look at the images. Anyone paying good money to watch it in a cinema, however, may not be a very happy camper.

In the deserts of Sudan / And the gardens of Japan / From Milan to Yucatan

Still the films arrived from around the globe, countries competing for the title of Most Exotic Provenance. Was it Egypt? Possibly, but I didn't manage to see the Egyptian entry, CLOSED DOORS. Was it China? Don't be silly, Chinese films stopped being exotic years ago - and have now stopped being any good as well, on the evidence of SHOWER (shown in Competition) and SEVENTEEN YEARS (43), a laboured tale of female bonding : the bondees are a prisoner and prison-guard, big lump and little ray of sunshine respectively, and the film notable mainly for some sharp family detail in the early scenes and for its glimpse of life under a gradually-imploding Communism, people talking of "re-education" even as kids play videogames and Western models preen on billboards.

Well then, was it Uzbekistan? Case closed, though LUNA PAPA (62) was in fact produced mainly with German money and co-stars Moritz Bleibtreu, a.k.a. Manni in RUN LOLA RUN. He's a simple-minded mute in an Uzbek village, whose sister is knocked up by a travelling player much to the chagrin of their father ; the film, a magical-realist romp in the style of a less earthy, more frolicsome Kusturica, is narrated by the girl's unborn child, ending with his birth ("The End" replaced by "Happy Birthday!", including the exclamation-mark). Our heroine looks a bit like Bjork and carries herself with the controlled hysteria of Betty Hutton ; everyone in the film seems to be a force of Nature. The high spirits are exhausting (the scene where a cow falls from the sky was, I think, my cut-off point), but director Bakhtiar Kudojnazarov has a knack for the unannounced gag - a woman pushing a pram in the middle of the desert, a performance of "Othello" interrupted when the lead actor is taunted with cries of "Pig-ears!" - and an eye for lustrous (albeit filtered) images. Indeed the visuals are a large part of the film's appeal, especially the unfamiliar Central Asian landscapes, spread-out and spacier than Kusturica's cramped Slavic settings ; sometimes all you need for a film to work is the sense of a new world being encountered.

Bring me my bow of burning gold / Bring me my arrows of desire

Which is also the appeal of KADOSH (56), looking at the world of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Mea Shearim, a rabidly religious Jerusalem neighbourhood (I nearly said ghetto - not inappropriately, seeing as the community has little contact with the rest of Israeli society), and specifically at the oppression of women, seen as child-bearers and second-class citizens. Going in, I wasn't looking forward to it : I have little love for Jewish (or any other) fundamentalists, but nor did I want to see a politically-correct liberal taking pot-shots at an easy target. "At least they believe in something, bozo!" I could hear myself yelling ; "What do you believe in?". But it wasn't like that, though director Amos Gitai clearly sees the fundamentalists, with their nationalist propaganda and disdain for the secular government, not just as religious nuts but as the chief obstacle to a peaceful Israel (the casting of a Palestinian actor as the Chief Rabbi is a statement in itself) : this is certainly a polemic but a very discreet one, done in quiet colours and long, unbroken shots with only a couple of low blows, mostly at the expense of the hero's boorish friend (his prayer scene is hysterical, in both senses). There's tenderness here, but a fair bit of padding as well : the plot disintegrates long before the end, leaving only a vague impression of creamy-beige sadness. It's a lot like the gorgeous but remote women who play its heroines, long-suffering and soft-spoken with faces of alabaster perfection ; but not much in the way of expression.

Best thing about the Festival definitely the setting : this year, for the first time, everything takes place in specially-designed area by the harbour, right beside the water - old warehouses converted into cinemas (generally successfully, despite some ventilation problems), smack in the middle of the port. Stray dogs all over the place, incredibly placid and laid-back - Greeks seem to have a live-and-let-live relationship with animals, hardly ever fuss over them, let them go their own way pretty much : Athens Airport the only one I've seen with a cat perched on the "Nothing to Declare" sign. Highlight of each film - esp. during the daytime - is leaving the cinema afterwards : on a sunny day, light scuds the clouds and shimmers on the water ; on a grey day, mist seems to rise up from the sea, shrouding the cranes and hawsers. Beautiful.

No no no no no / I'm not / A juvenile delinquent

Geographically speaking, France vs. England was perhaps the most striking contrast - though LE PETIT VOLEUR (71) is the kind of film the Brits used to do quite well, especially on TV. It is indeed a made-for-TV movie, and only an hour long, but it confirms Erick Zonca in the top tier of current film-makers : there's perhaps a touch of moralism to this tale of a teen gone bad - a suggestion that he's got ideas above his station, like Natascha Regnier in DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS - and the underworld ambience is a little much (the excesses of certain American indies come to mind), but the film is too precise, compassionate and quietly humorous to find much fault with. It goes beyond naturalism, though that's a large part of it - details like baguettes being scored with a sharp knife prior to baking are indeed admirable (the minutiae of daily work are a favourite Zonca theme), but it's also the way that knife is connected to another, more frightening knife in the film's penultimate scene, and the way baking serves as an implicit metaphor, made explicit in the epilogue : the kid like dough, punched and kneaded by Life, finally ending up in a pre-packaged life like the baguettes in their individual plastic wrappers (among the many clichés avoided is the innocence-corrupted ending, leaving the hero on the threshold of more serious crimes). That he could be any sulky, know-nothing teen is of course the point, and the film is funny and tender on male rituals and the awkwardness of adolescence (e.g. when he head-butts a door while shadow-boxing in his room, carried away by hormones) ; it's not entirely impartial, but it is conspicuously non-judgmental. In fact, it's a little gem.

I don't give a fuck / God sent me to piss the world off

Then there was L'HUMANITE (66), or : The Inadequacy Of Ratings. I initially gave this mind-boggling epic a 59, meaning "interesting but not quite recommended", and that's probably the most accurate reaction : but it haunted and troubled me in the days that followed, the bug-eyed lugubriousness of star Emmanuel Schotté proving impossible to shake ; there are moments when I'm tempted to throw caution to the winds and follow many of my cyber-brethren in proclaiming it a masterpiece. Yet it gives so little - a perverse non-plot at an unvarying (and unvaryingly slow) pace, in a bare-bones style. You can't even speak of inessentials being stripped away a la Bresson (though I haven't seen AU HASARD BALTHASAR or MOUCHETTE, which I suspect are the relevant Bressons in this case), because Dumont doesn't strip away, or suggest any transcendental dimension in what he shows (though we're welcome to supply one if we like) : he provides geometric, stylised spaces in which things happen - or usually don't - concentrating only on giving everything its due, even if it's wholly inconsequential. His spatial sense is traditional arthouse, characters stranded amid vast, humbling settings (e.g. the sweeping enormity of the British Rail building where our hero conducts a monumentally pointless interview), but his instincts are bolder, utterly unafraid to flirt with the ridiculous : Schotté, as I understand it, is in effect playing the title-role, ruefully observing the joys and depravities of his fellow beings - but why does Humanity have to move like an automaton and talk like Chance the gardener, and why include a scene where this mild-mannered simpleton faces down a mob of angry protesters (provoking inevitable derisive laughter from the audience)? I don't know the answers to these questions ; I can't even call the film "hypnotic", seeing as I started drifting off about an hour or so into it, and the ending left a distinct is-that-it? feeling ; I only know it throbs with the power of the unseen, the realisation that, even in our antiseptic hi-tech world, we can never know everything, nor can we escape our origins as cruel, rutting animals. I'm not sure I like this exasperating, one-of-a-kind movie - and I know its acting awards were an incredibly perverse Cannes decision - but I'm not ready to dismiss it as the Emperor's New Clothes either. Though I can understand those who say, "Well if this isn't the Emperor's New Clothes, then what on earth is?"...

And you think you're so clever / And classless and free

... My vote goes to HUMAN TRAFFIC (45), fatuously described by a prominent British paper as "the last great film of the Nineties", and perhaps the only film I saw at the Festival that was interrupted by tumultuous applause - though it came nowhere near winning the Audience Award (for films in Competition), so there was obviously a sizeable minority who disliked it as much as I did, i.e. with a passion. Admittedly I'm not really qualified to talk about it : this is a film for and about British 'rave' culture, which I've never been a part of (though I like some of the music). In other words I'm about as much the target audience here as I am for DUMBO, and yes, I suppose it makes sense that a film about partying all night should be so full of energy and so superficial at the same time ; but did it have to be so pleased with itself, so secondhand?

There's one-word intros for the characters a la TRAINSPOTTING. There's the inevitable drugs-subtext-in-STAR-WARS deconstruction, bits of Bill Hicks and Denis Leary, reference to CLERKS (but CLERKS was basically pessimistic, and never this self-congratulatory) ; characters talk to camera, refer to each other as "The Prince Of Paranoia", star in their own spoof TV shows, fantasy interludes and national anthems - it's a bit like THE KNACK, with the older generation reduced to uncomprehending walk-ons, but with the crude, rollicking rhythm of a football chant or a pub singalong : it's like being trapped on a bus with a horde of teenagers just after school on a Friday afternoon. That the film is inventive and occasionally well-observed - I liked the hardened clubbers in the corner, moaning about how the scene used to be so much better five years ago - is undeniable ; but it's pitched at the level of a tabloid, it's often smug (as when our heroes go through a shitlist of Really Bad Bands, roaring with laughter - the audience roared too - at mere mention of the Spice Girls, Hanson, 911 et al.), and above all it's witless. One example : our hero introduces his mother in voice-over, telling us that she services a lot of men every day, is a fast worker, works from home etc etc - making it sound like she's a whore without quite telling us what she does. I waited for the punchline, assuming that she had some dreary soul-destroying job that was like being a whore (wit, you see) ; but it turns out she is a whore, which is just stupid. The film is presumably relevant for English youth - which is England's problem.

Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it

England, and the English movie renaissance in general, had a lot of problems, though THE WAR ZONE (54) came festooned with many a rave (not that kind of rave) from critics and festivals. Some nice stuff here, like the family-of-invalids imagery after the car-crash in the first few minutes (dysfunction made visual) and some excellent compositions - a shot canopied by the crest of a tree, or simply the distribution of family members around the frame. But other people's problems aren't necessarily fascinating, and Tim Roth's straightforward moody miserablism - long-night-of-the-soul visuals in a dank-grey setting of sea and stone - never transcends them as e.g. NIL BY MOUTH's lurid, almost fantastical netherworld did. More importantly, the doomy style destroys the ambiguity planted by the Oedipal motive (the scene where the boy watches his parents in bed), viz. the possibility that he may be lying ; denial is, after all, the movie's main theme and, if the style suggested an ordinary family, we might disbelieve even the evidence of our own eyes, might suspect even the shocking incest scene to be no more than the boy's sick fantasy. With these dark images, however, it's clear from the start that he's telling the truth, leaving only powerfully-made, conventional drama - and leaving Ray Winstone's in-denial, apparently loving paterfamilias ("Mummy's all upset") looking more absurd than monstrous, like he's drifted in from another, sunnier movie. An opportunity wasted - unlike FOLLOWING (55), which takes all its opportunities and then some, making a movie (albeit not much of a movie) with clearly limited resources.

This is like an exceptionally well-accomplished film-school graduation film - short (70 mins.), rather stilted and gratuitously stylish. It's entertaining, especially in the first half - before it plunges into rather shopworn neo-noir - but not especially compelling : I even noticed the little in-joke linking the posters from THE SHINING on the hero's bedroom wall to the name he adopts for himself ("Danny Lloyd", who of course co-starred in THE SHINING), and there really shouldn't be time to notice things like that in a 70-minute movie. Still, to repeat a well-worn phrase, director Christopher Nolan is clearly one to follow.

Clinton's here. Not actually here, he's in Athens on a one-day state visit, but there's demonstrations here as well - strong anti-American feeling in Greece, dating back to the early 70s and the US-supported military junta, inflamed by recent Kosovo crisis. Came out of an interview, straight into a massive demonstration - took about 20 minutes for the parade of protesters to pass. Street closed, obviously, cops everywhere. Slogans chanted - untranslatable, mostly - placards held aloft ("Out With Clinton - Down With the New World Order"). Demonstrators are a motley bunch - some just ordinary citizens, others affiliated to various groups ; Communist Party faction (quite a lot of them - the Party still has power round these parts) carry Soviet flags and Che Guevara posters : time-warp time. The anarchists are the ones to watch out for - and the reason why so many demonstrations end in violence here, though none of the locals seemed overly concerned. Thought about staying, but decided to slink away. Later heard that one of the protesters stormed into the Festival area, started to harangue the cinephiles : "Battles aren't won watching films in comfortable cinemas!" quoth he. "Battles are won out on the streets!". Right on, brother!

The American contingent - feeling the heat, no doubt - generally disappointed, though I guess it's something of a compliment to say that I couldn't wait for SURRENDER DOROTHY (33) to end, given how hard it tries to be creepy and unpleasant. This is a cheap-but-potent (but mostly cheap) indie, shot in black-and-white, in which a sexually screwed-up young man forces his junkie room-mate (played by writer-director Kevin DiNovis) to become his "woman" in exchange for a steady drug supply : a cheerfully adolescent first half (sample line : "Hey Trevor, quit jerking off, I gotta take a dump") leads to a catalogue of humiliations, escalating from wearing an apron and doing the housework to enforced hormone treatment and possible castration. Its cartoonish sadomasochism is certainly claustrophobic, kind of unnerving, but also ridiculous : even while getting into the film's loopy Grand Guignol I kept flashing on Skander Halim's gloriously succinct three-word review of TWIN FALLS IDAHO : "This movie's stupid".

He's a boy / You want a girl, so tear off his cock / Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him / Call him Rita if you want

How stupid? Well, consider this : the film's main location is the room-mates' dingy apartment, but a few minor scenes were shot - clearly on a low-low budget, precluding re-shoots - in a restaurant where the hero is supposed to be working. Unfortunately, all these scenes turned out to be out of focus - yet the director, clearly unwilling to compromise his 'vision', not only leaves them in but puts these blurry, unwatchable, inessential-to-the-plot scenes right at the beginning of his movie (all except one, which is how I realised where the problem lay), inevitably sparking protests from the audience and causing the projectionist to fiddle around with his focus, thereby ruining all the ensuing scenes as well till he puts the focus back to where it was in the first place. Clearly, "amateurish" is putting it mildly ; would you trust these people to make an intelligent movie?

Me and some guys from school / Had a band and we tried real hard

What about Allison Anders? Would you trust her? The question might've seemed preposterous in the days of (the over-rated) GAS FOOD LODGING, but SUGAR TOWN (54) reinforces the suspicion that her main talent may be for friendship rather than film-making, and inveigling her friends into appearing in her movies. Everyone seems to have had a good time making this one, especially the 80s rock stars playing variations on themselves ; it's "A Jack 'N Zack Production", typifying the playful atmosphere, and co-director Kurt Voss even 'appears' on the dust-jacket of a book called "If I'm So Great, Why Can't I Get A Date?". The result is pleasant but disposable, mostly a matter of rock'n roll in-jokes and broad digs at New Age nonsense, capped by a precocious 12-year-old who might've strayed in from any studio picture - though Jade Gordon does add a surprising bit of edge as an ambitious young conniver. "Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," she tells herself with the scary fervour of ELECTION's Tracy Flick ; "I think Cher said that..."

FELICIA'S JOURNEY (57) wasn't up to much either, though Atom Egoyan will never make an uninteresting movie. Why I'm putting it in this American section I don't know, beyond a vague North American connection - but there's certainly nothing Canadian about it beyond Egoyan's passport, though it's not quite British or Irish either : a fitting problem for a film so schizophrenic and curate's-eggish, the Atom split into dire (and unnecessary) Oirishness, an outlandish serial-killer plot, and several magnificent passages courtesy of Bob Hoskins' fastidious, grandmotherly Mr. Hillditch. He's a champion for human emotion in the age of the machine (cue shots of overpasses and power-stations), wanting - no, demanding - only to be loved, but this promising theme gets lost in the clutter : a melodramatic montage shuffling opera-glasses, lipstick and a decapitated John the Baptist from Old-Hollywood kitsch SALOME (starring Rita Hayworth), a puzzling strand featuring born-again evangelists (a red herring? or is it more?), scenes from a farcical 50s cookery show, superfluous flashbacks to Felicia's Irish village. Given the almost anal-retentive precision of Egoyan's previous work, this slapdash mix of moods is quite a surprise - though the film's antic sensibility has its charms, especially when Hoskins is doing his maiden-aunt imitation and telling Felicia to drink up your tea while it's warm, dearie ("the goodness is in the warmth, they say").

Still, you have to wonder what Egoyan thought he was doing. Is it just that he can't do literary adaptations (I thought he made a dreadful hash of Russell Banks' "Sweet Hereafter", though like most people I loved Atom Egoyan's SWEET HEREAFTER), prompting him to include a lot of stuff just because it was in the book? Or does it actually come together in a way I missed? One thing's for sure : the final scene - though it makes sense in thematic terms, stressing that the film is Felicia's Journey - is as lame as they come.

Conversation with Bill Forsyth (rather lengthy, so you can skip to the end if you like). He's 53, rather unassuming-looking - bags under the eyes, thatch of greying hair with the texture of something you might use to scour the oven, permanently worried expression, though it's a generalised rather than specific worry : not the acute, distracted worry of someone thinking about being double-parked or whatever, but a kind of thoughtful shadow behind his grey-blue eyes. A philosophical worry - or maybe just a quiet dreaminess that comes across as worry...

TP : Tell me a little about your background.

BF : Well, I was born in Glasgow, just a very ordinary kind of industrial city in Scotland. My parents were workers, they worked - they woke up very early in the morning. I didn't see them very often, because by the time I got up to go to school they had already gone to work ... As a boy at school I was a bit of a dreamer, you know, I liked reading and - I liked writing to some extent, but I had very vague ambitions, I didn't know then what I was going to do. Then, when I was 17, I had to make a decision, whether to go to university or find a job - and in my situation the expected thing was to find a job, it wasn't the normal thing to go to university -

Did your family see you as being a bit strange?

Kind of. A bit unusual, yeah.

So was it quite a stormy relationship?

(shakes head) Very passive, very passive. ... Put it this way, I couldn't make a film about it because nothing happened, there was very little happening. Very little communication, very little - I suppose, understanding ... Anyway, when I was 17, there was a job being advertised in the local newspaper, an apprentice for a film company, and I applied for that job and I got it - but at that time I had no interest in film, it just seemed an interesting job. I didn't really like going to the cinema, because - well, you know when you're a kid and you go to the cinema, you're treated like a kind of animal, you're like sheep, you have to do this and go that way. Also the kinds of films that I saw, I felt I was being very manipulated - mostly American films made 'for young people'. So I didn't have any kind of interest in cinema.

What was your plan at that point?

I don't suppose I had one - I had a dream of being a writer at some point, but I was kind of postponing it, I thought I'd be a writer when I was older. I wasn't really working very hard at anything ... Once I had this job though - we made industrial movies [60s equivalent of infomercials, shown in cinemas before the main feature] - it was only then I began to be interested in cinema, and began to watch movies. That was in the mid-60s, and the movies that were coming to my town then were the French New Wave - Resnais, Louis Malle, Godard. And these were the first movies that I really watched.

Is there one that stands out for you?

Yes, Pierrot Le Fou - that was a kind of mind-changing thing, you know? So, from then on, I wanted to be a film-maker!

How did you go about it?

Well, I was still very young, so I ... well, I just thought myself into being a film-maker, I just decided that I was a film-maker. And I did all the things, you know, like trying to comb my hair like a Frenchman, smoke Gauloises - I did the whole Gauloises thing - and drink coffee out of a bowl, you know, with no handle! ... Just to make myself into a film-maker. And I think I had made myself into a film-maker before I actually started to make films.

How do you think people around you saw you at that time?

Um ... Difficult to say. Probably very reserved, very shy - someone who would always be against the wall rather than in the middle of the room, you know?

Scotland isn't the easiest of places to be a film-maker...

No, no. You see, we have a big problem, like the rest of the UK, in that we speak English, English is our language - so we can't really have an indigenous cinema, because we're so close to America, we're so close to the big market. So it's very difficult to make the intimate films, and it's also very difficult for Scottish people to want to see them, because they're so used to the bigger product, they have no sensibility of a small local film. Even something like Trainspotting, the people who made that film live in London, they come from England - essentially they were just exploiting something that happened to be fashionable. And there's not a lot to work on in Scotland - it's kind of underdeveloped culturally, there's no strong culture.

How d'you mean?

Well ... You know what the image of Scotland is to most Scottish people? Mel Gibson, with his face painted blue! And I'm afraid that's the level of engagement for most Scottish people with independence. Independence doesn't really mean a lot to a country like Scotland, because we're not struggling - we're not fighting for democracy or anything. Politics in a country like Scotland is about housekeeping - it's not about basic human freedoms, it's about making sure that the streets are cleaned ... I don't know what the people of Scotland have to offer the world that's unique, I don't think they have anything much, really. We're just good little workers, you know, we get on with business - with, as I say, not a desperate amount of cultural history that you can pull out of the air and say, 'well, this is who we are', you know? We're the people that, when the Romans came to Scotland, they said 'Let's build a wall'! And they built a wall 100 miles long and they said, 'OK, you stay there and we'll stay here'. And things have kind of stayed that way.

Where do you live now?

I still live in Glasgow, but I also spend a lot of time in Italy. I have a house there also.

Isn't that something of a recurring theme in your films, the meeting of Scottish and Latin cultures? There's the Italians in Comfort And Joy, and the Latin Americans in this new film...

I suppose so. To us in Scotland, the idea of the Latin is always a kind of threat - much more expansive, more romantic. All the girls in Glasgow would go on holiday and find Italian boyfriends, and we'd always be the ones left at home. Everyone seemed to be having a better time than we were, you know? And it seemed so exotic - because it was so difficult to travel in those days, we had to make a real decision. I remember when I was about 17, some friends and I wanted to go to Greece and Paris, so we bought a little van for £10 and our dream was to travel the world in it, you know? [How far did you get?] We never even left Glasgow - because we couldn't get passports, our parents wouldn't sign the application forms...

You were already in your 30s when you made your first film.

That's right. There were no feature films made in Scotland at all, the only way you could have a career as a feature-film maker was to leave, go somewhere else. For different reasons, I didn't want to leave, so a few of us decided to stay in Scotland and try to make it work. By this time I was directing these industrial films, and meanwhile we were gathering crew, living off the short films we produced - and we had this dream, that someday we would have enough people and enough energy to make our film. And it took ten years to do that, but that's exactly what happened - because the first film that I made, I made for no money, on 16mm., with the crew that I worked on the small films with, and they all worked for no money for three weeks. I wrote it very quickly because I was working with young actors - obviously we had to make films cheap, and I thought kids would be cheaper to work with than adults. So I went to the local Youth Theatre and got to know them, worked with the kids for a few months, and during the course of that I got two solid ideas for movies. And one of those became That Sinking Feeling.

What were your expectations for the film?

What I wanted to do was - I couldn't imagine it playing in a theatre, in a cinema, so what I thought we'd do was I'd actually take a projector and travel around the country and show it to people, and make money that way. I thought, if you turned up in a small town in Scotland and said 'This is a movie from Scotland, come and see it', everybody would want to see it. So that was the kind of naive ambition. But by the time we'd finished the film, we showed it at the Festival in Edinburgh - it's an international Festival, so a lot of journalists saw it, a lot of producers saw it - and after that things just changed very, very quickly. That film helped me to become well-known, and within a year I was able to make another film, with a real budget. And that was Gregory's Girl - that was the first film I made with money.

Were you surprised by success?

Well, by that time it had been ten years, you know, of believing a dream, so by that time it was like the rest of the world was catching up, you know? We all knew the kind of abilities we had, it's just that no-one else knew them. It was quite unconscious though, because I didn't expect the kind of reaction that we had - it was quite a dramatic reaction, because there had been no feature film made in Scotland for 50 years, so people were seeing it as a kind of historical event.

Did success change your personality though, make you more confident?

I'm still pretty reserved, but I'm quite at ease with it - because the more you travel, the more you see other people and you realise that ... well, when I was young it was a kind of disability to be the way I was, but when you see that other people work that way, and most creative people have a part of themselves that is private - these were all revelations to me, to find out that the kind of person that I am is a legitimate kind of person! [Does it make all the schmoozing of the film business more difficult, though?] Not really - if you have to do it, you do it. But I don't think there are too many people who actually live that life, and believe in it. You know - it's a job, and you have to project that kind of image. But everyone knows I'd rather be home in bed than at this party or whatever!

But you did go to Hollywood for a while...

I only went to Hollywood for money, I didn't go to Hollywood for a career. I went to Hollywood because I found an American story that I wanted to make into a movie [Housekeeping], and I needed money for it, that was the only reason. Also we shot the movie in Canada, and it was only $5 million, so it wasn't really a Hollywood movie. The studio were being very kind to us, they didn't expect - well, I mean, it wasn't as if I was just starting out, they knew what they were taking on ... But David Puttnam [who had greenlighted the film] left Columbia, by the time the film was released he had gone - which meant that the film didn't get a good release, because all his movies were kind of ignored, you know?

Do you think many of your films have been misunderstood because of bad releasing and the like?

(instantly) I think so, yeah. But also, I don't think I make it easy for distributors, because I - because there's something in me that doesn't want to satisfy the audience, you know, there's a little something in me that wants to - maybe not disturb the audience but to make them a little unsettled. Because, as I say, when I was younger I hated being manipulated by films, and so I always fight against doing that to an audience. But the truth is, I think, in commercial cinema people want to be manipulated. So I don't think I satisfy them in that way.

Do you think audiences will change, or is that kind of attitude here to stay?

I think it's here to stay, at least in my country, because we have so much American product - it comes in waves, it never stops. And the way they're promoted, the audience is told which movies to like before they see them - they really just go to observe an event, they don't go to participate. They go to see the hit, not to make it a hit. So it's quite dispiriting. I mean, even my films in Scotland, they don't ... because the audience is so used to American films, my films unsettle them a bit, they think 'well, why do you make it so difficult for us to enjoy it?'. They want to enjoy it, but they kind of say 'why don't you make it easier for us to enjoy it?'.

Does that bother you?

No, no ... I think it's my duty in life to disturb an audience rather than to satisfy them! I just want to do that, because I think they need it, you know?

But aren't you ever tempted by the money you could make if you changed your style?

No, not really. It's not a matter of ... I mean, there's no way I could work inside the American system because I just wouldn't be able to function - because I can't take orders, I can't be told to do something. So it would just be a waste of time. I've been close to that kind of situation a few times, when you make a film for $5-6 million and you have a preview - and my previews are always bad, they're always bad - and so after the preview the financiers will come and say 'it's no good we have to change it, we have to do this, we have to do that', and I say 'well, you do it if you want, I'm not doing it'. And it always becomes uncomfortable.

Why are your previews always bad?

Because the audience are in a situation where they're being asked to criticise, you know? They're not there to say whether they liked something or not, they think they're there to tell you what's wrong with the film. And there's always things wrong with my films - because I try and make sure there are things wrong with them, to an audience! And so they spot them. And that's it, you know? [You mean things that don't quite fit?] Yes, awkward things. I like to make things awkward for the audience.

Many of the films seem to have a kind of leap in the middle - like Comfort And Joy starts off as a low-key story of a lonely guy, then it suddenly escalates into this bizarre ice-cream war. Do you consciously try and write them that way?

It's not a conscious thing, it just seems to be the way that they end up. For instance, with Comfort And Joy I had the original idea of a couple splitting up and an individual trying to create a new life on his own, but maybe I'm insecure because I thought well, that's not enough for a movie. So I had this idea for about 6-7 years but I didn't do it - and then suddenly I read about this ice-cream war and I thought yeah, I'll fit these two together. And it's the same with the new film, Gregory's Two Girls, because I had the idea of the teacher who's obsessed with a pupil and I thought that's kind of conventional, it's been done lots of times, it needs something else - and suddenly I got all this stuff about the arms industry and torture equipment, so I thought, bring these two together! So it's a very similar exercise. But you see, it's just me trying to keep the audience alert, because I still don't understand - it's a terrible thing, I've made 8 or 9 films and I still don't know what people want from a movie, I really don't. It's a mystery to me.

So what do you say if people ask what it takes to be a successful film-maker?

Well, it depends what you mean by 'successful' because - well, when I come to a Festival like this, for 3 or 4 days I do feel successful, because it's wonderful to have people from another country watch your film and seem to appreciate it, which is staggering. But when I go back home, and think about making another film - or even about this film, which had a dreadful release in the UK - well, in terms of being a successful film-maker, I don't know if I am or not. I know that I enjoy the struggle of making films, and I also enjoy the rhythm of life, because I usually write my own material so it takes a few years between movies. And I like that rhythm, because I'm not desperate to make another 20 movies or whatever. So I like the idea of, you finish a movie, then you think and you write and you speculate...

What's the longest period of writer's-block you've been through?

Maybe a year. But in that year I moved house as well - and I learned to ride a motorbike, so I wasn't idle! ... But I work at home, so it's a very easy lifestyle - I'm very lucky in that I've got the luxury of not having to work every day. I can make enough on a film to keep me going for a couple of years, so I've got time to think, time to speculate and dream a little bit, and then it's time to go back out and work again. Normally, two or three years is quite a nice rhythm for me. Though the gap between this film and the previous one was a bit longer - five years - so now I've got two and a half projects ready, and strangely enough I'm also thinking of doing a film from someone else's script for the first time. [What about Breaking In?] Sorry I forgot about that, because I actually did quite a bit of writing on that. John [Sayles] had written it 10 years before, and it was set in the 70s and stylistically very dated - so he said 'Tell him he can do anything he wants', because he'd already been paid for it years before. So I spent my normal kind of writing time on that. This new script though, someone just sent it to me in the post, and I was very surprised when I was taken by it. Though in a way I can see why - because there's a big tension between writing a film and making a film. Because when you write a film you have so many ambitions for it, you have dreams for it, and you're never satisfied. It always happens that, for good reason, something might change - sometimes it's better but certainly it's never the same, never the way the writer imagined it. When the film ends up being made, the director always lets the writer down - and if that's one person, it's a very unhappy experience. Because it means you're letting yourself down, you know?

So, to get back to an earlier question - what does it take to be a commercially successful film-maker?

Well ... It's something to do with sentimentality. And it's something to do with easy solutions. And it's something to do with a kind of hero - there's always kind of a cheap heroism in successful films, you know? And I think they're childish, because they're trying to satisfy something of the child in the audience - if you're at school and you're being bullied, it's always nice to dream of someone coming to protect you or the bully being bullied or something. And of course in real life it never happens ... [So they're a kind of therapy?] I would say more than that, I'd say they're a kind of opiate, because they're a way of stopping people from thinking, and from assessing the real situation in terms of where they are as individuals, where they fit in. So I think it's quite a malign thing, really...

What kind of films do you like? What have you seen recently that you really loved?

Um ... You see, I don't ever want to love a movie. I just want to enjoy it. I don't think movies - well, maybe once again I'm reacting against the movie monolith, but I don't ever want a movie to move me. I mean, I think it's a myth that a movie can change someone's life or whatever. So I'm always downplaying the experience. I mean, I can sit through a comedy and barely smile, and enjoy it completely without having to burst into laughter. Having said that, I saw three movies on Monday here at the Festival, and that's more movies than I've seen in a month - I had forgotten how nice just watching a movie is, you know?...

Books? Music?

I read so much it's difficult to remember. I think I'm sort of old-fashioned in the things I read - someone like Nabokov, I've got a shelf of Nabokov books and when I finish it I just go back and start again, you know? [Music?] Just whatever's on the radio. I mean, I'm not a consumer - I'm not a consumer of anything, really. And I feel the reason I'm not into things is because I feel someone's hassling, manipulating me into liking this or that. Why should I buy something this week, because you're selling it to me? Well, maybe I'll buy it next week, when you don't want to sell it to me. It's that thing - I'm just a wee bit kind of awkward...

What do you think your friends have in common? What draws you to people?

I suppose a way of life more than anything. A kind of feeling of - well, I think 'anarchism' is too strong a word, but it's a feeling of fighting against, of trying to find a way of life. Though most of the people I know have the luxury of being able to choose their way of life, to a certain extent. So we like to think of ourselves as being slightly 'alternative', we have all the right ideas and everything - but like I say, we're a bit indulgent and a bit middle-aged about it!

Any regrets? Would you change anything if you had it all to do again?

I think I'd work harder at being a film-maker. I always feel I haven't worked hard enough when it gets round to filming - on the first day of filming I always think, I'm not ready for this! If I could survive as a writer, I'd much rather write than make films - that would be my ideal future, really.

But it's a continuous struggle working out what you want to give people and what you think people want from you. They never seem to want what you want to give them at any one time ...

Every Festival has its big surprise, or so it seems ; it almost makes you wonder if you're seeing the film objectively - maybe the mind, swamped by a barrage of movies, simply latches on to one of them as if to say "This one's mine". Was Michael Winterbottom's I WANT YOU really as great as it seemed to me in Athens last year, or was it just what my mind craved at the time? And can GREGORY'S TWO GIRLS (68) really be as wonderful as it seemed in Thessaloniki this time round, especially when every other critic seems to have dismissed it as a minor, unsuccessful sequel to the 1980 GREGORY'S GIRL? Two factors suggest that it is indeed that wonderful : first, the consistently under-rated Bill Forsyth ; second, the enthusiastic reception it got from the audience I saw it with, despite Forsyth's introduction of it as a "local film" that probably wouldn't travel very well.

Now that we've grown up together / They're afraid of what they see

His doubts can only be put down to congenital self-deprecation, for the themes tackled are universal - and the film, though ungainly in comparison with the original, is a better, deeper, more ambitious work, one that tries to do too much yet manages to be both funny and touching : Forsyth can write solid farce then suddenly pierce the heart with a line or a bit of business, as when Gregory (played once again by the treasurably goofy John Gordon Sinclair), now a teacher at his former high-school, quotes Nabokov on the idealism of youth - the capacity to feel angry about a Sicilian peasant maltreating his old pot-bellied donkey thousands of miles away. "Is he the one who wrote 'Lolita'?" asks the innocent teenage girl he's quoting it to, and we're back with farce again (seeing as he spends most of the film trying to avoid lascivious thoughts about her nubile young charms) - a perfectly slick transition, making the film's commercial failure all the more baffling. Maybe it's because it mixes things up a bit, throwing in human-rights campaigners and such fanciful details as a dog who apparently understands what people say (not unlike the girl who might be a mermaid in LOCAL HERO) - but its central theme is clear enough, namely the difficulty of being a good liberal in a complicated world, one where the principles of protecting children can't quite prevent unsavoury thoughts from creeping in, and where we all live in a state of armchair-radical hypocrisy, denouncing the evils of the world from our comfortable perch while telling ourselves that unfortunately nothing can be done about them (as the human-rights campaigner acidly notes, "people who have all the good things own the best opinions too"). Forsyth remains a wonderful combination of whimsical and philosophical, brimming over with generosity of spirit - everyone gets a fair deal here - and a touching faith in cross-cultural connections : this patchy, achingly lovely comedy (I'm tempted to call it a "thinking person's comedy", only I suspect that would totally kill its chances in the current climate) was among the Fest's most emotionally satisfying movies.

And when force is gone / There's always Mom

As was ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (77) (third viewing: 75) - and you can add cinematically satisfying too, for this expert concoction shows Pedro Almodovar blending comedy, caramaderie, glitz and melodrama with an assurance rarely evident in his previous work. This is basically a "chick-flick", but it does to that abhorrent genre what LORENZO'S OIL did to the disease-of-the-week movie, i.e. raises it to the level of Art, anchored by the common sense and magnificent grief of Cecilia Roth's all-conquering uber-mother. "What's the big deal?" some have said, pointing out that none of the ingredients are exactly original - which is rather like having a paella at a top Spanish restaurant and saying Well for heaven's sake, it's only rice and prawns and mussels. The trick is of course in the way it's put together, the way Antonia San Juan's bitchy wisecrack about fat babies in the final scene (not especially memorable in itself) complements Marisa Paredes' regal hauteur and Roth's quiet rapture at her own "miracle" baby, or the constant undertow of Roth's volcanic grief, rumbling to the surface whenever her son's spirit is invoked ; even on second viewing I found myself choking up. Almodovar's next film will apparently be made in the US, which is only fitting ; he is, clearly, ready for Hollywood - which, for now at least, is very much a good thing.

Also ready for Hollywood is Léa Pool's strangely over-rated EMPORTE-MOI (38), which is less of a good thing : a coming-of-age film (young girl, Jewish, Montreal, early 60s, sickly mother, 'difficult' father) that's clearly autobiographical - you can tell because unusual detail is offered for its own sake, rather than leading to anything - yet feels thoroughly generic. Kissing games are played. "Stand By Me" and "Runaround Sue" wail in the background. Our heroine goes to the movies (VIVRE SA VIE), watches enraptured. Everything stops, in boring two-shot, so her father can 'open up' with a story of something that happened "before I met your mother". And of course we leave the girl on the threshold of Life, a budding film-maker clutching that precious First Camera ("I was never the same after that summer," says Ms. Pool in voice-over ; no, not really). Is there anything here we haven't seen before? Yes! Miki Manojlovic in a yarmulke...

Film introduced by Pool and Manojlovic. Pool correct, pleasant, rather charming ; Manojlovic embarrassing, hilarious, possibly drunk as a skunk, mop of hair notably unkempt. Called upon to speak, he looks totally out of it. "I once did 'Waiting For Godot' in the theatre," he says in French. The Fest guy duly translates. "I played the part of Vladimir". Waits for translation, his doleful face giving nothing away. "The part of the father in this movie has nothing at all to do with Vladimir," sez Miki. Fest guy translates, looking worried. "But it reminds me of him anyway". So much for the speech. We applaud, rather uncertainly ; Miki nods dreamily.

Biggest star by far : Catherine Deneuve, in town for only a couple of days. Mobbed at the airport by fans and paparazzi, welcomed by the Mayor himself. Introduced Le Vent De La Nuit, prompting me to select an aisle seat, envisaging diva behaviour by La Deneuve, consequent running late of film and need for a quick getaway. Nothing of the kind : she arrived right on time (unlike much of the audience), spoke charmingly - saying how much she loves the film, warning us that it might require a little patience - wished us all a pleasant evening, sat down quietly. Plus she's 56 and looks gorgeous. What a woman!

Catherine Deneuve is top-billed in Philippe Garrel's LE VENT DE LA NUIT (63), but it's a question of the name rather than the part - and no doubt a sign of gratitude for enabling this notoriously uncommercial director to raise money for a movie. This was the first Garrel I've ever seen ; I like it. There's lots of wandering-around-at-dawn shots (to the strains of a piano score), shots of people thinking rather than doing anything, long, languid fades to black ; there are failed revolutionaries and morose ex-radicals - now driving Porsches and contemplating suicide - and a final shot which would've been absolutely perfect had it cut to black ten seconds earlier. Daniel Duval, suitably saturnine, is the melancholy man of the 60s, Xavier Beauvois the young colleague he bonds with - but the generational chasm is too unbridgeable, and drugs are only a partial solution (because, says Duval in a line that's worth the whole of HUMAN TRAFFIC, they were "a way of being alone" back then, whereas they're a way of socialising for today's youngsters). In the end, says the film, the only true radical is the one who's honest with himself, lives his life his own way - and if that means destroying it, well, so be it.

Free at last / They took your life / They could not take your pride

It's a theme echoed in Arturo Ripstein's NO-ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL (58), which, in 10 words or less, may be summarised thus : "Elderly couple have nothing but each other - and their dignity". The trouble with the film is it adds very little to that synopsis. The couple, played by Fernando Lujan and Marisa Paredes, are indeed destitute and miserable ; we get lots of dark, candle-lit scenes, the blinds drawn even in the daytime, rain pouring down outside ("looks like it's going to rain again"), talk of funerals, rats and asthma ; yet they're dignified, even to the point of destroying themselves by refusing to accept reality - which is all the more poignant because the old man, as per the title, is a Colonel, who once fought "for a rational country" against the forces of clericalism and superstition (but can now survive only by being irrational). The great thing about the film is its coherence, both stylistic and dramatic - it's all of a piece and the performances are uniformly fine, down to Salma Hayek as a local prostitute. The scenes where Hayek tries to help the couple are perhaps the most touching in a touching film - but my favourite moment is the one where the old man's beloved rooster suddenly leaps onto his lap, crowing loudly ; the old man doesn't move, merely pats the bird and nods understandingly...

Marisa Paredes Charms Angry Audience Sensation! Diminutive diva's car snarled up by traffic! Audience waits in packed theatre, sitting in the aisles! Ventilation problems make theatre unbearably hot! Off-screen voice counsels patience, she'll only be a few more minutes! Audience ready to kill someone! Paredes' arrival sparks incredible wave of emotion! Resentment forgotten as actress smiles, blows kisses and opens her arms to enfold us all in imaginary group-hug! People shout out Spanish phrases! Film was made amid "mucho calor", says Marisa! Did she mean heat or passion? Both appropriate...

Two days into the Festival, an announcement was introduced before each film : "Viewers are requested to switch off their cellular phones". I suspect its introduction had a lot to do with THE WIND WILL CARRY US (68), in which the hero - a visitor from Tehran in a remote Iranian village, hanging around on a never-explained mission that has something to do with an old woman's death - is forever rushing up to higher ground (to pick up the signal) when his cell-phone rings - making for general consternation whenever beeping sounds began during the performance (was it the character's, or one of many in the audience?) and, more generally, skewering the frantic pointlessness of cell-phone culture in a way that made everyone feel a little embarrassed. It's contrasted, implicitly, with the placid rhythms and eternal verities of village life, where place-names never change, everybody knows each other and the pace is delightfully slow - making this in many ways Kiarostami's most 'picturesque' movie, its appeal not far removed from that of MEDITERRANEO or CINEMA PARADISO (or LA FEMME DU BOULANGER, for another generation) : the director makes no concessions to Western pacing, down to the fuck-you shot (surely tongue-in-cheek) where the camera actually follows a tortoise, yet he's also appealing primarily to Western (arthouse) audiences, who'll happily see Profundity in anything slow and ethnic.

Is he then something of a con-artist? Not at all, and the film - already being called a masterwork, not unreasonably - is a quietly hypnotic series of encounters, quests and repetitions in a literally timeless place (Time dissolves, gets muddled, days run into weeks), complicated by the hero's (and, by extension, the director's) ambivalent relationship with the people he meets. He befriends a kid but also condescends to him a little, making light of his exams as if they weren't important. He hunts for milk, descending to a dark basement where he recites poetry to a faceless girl in the film's eeriest scene. By the end he's affirming Life, singing along with the local doctor and sabotaging his mission by getting medicine for the old woman - yet we leave him unfulfilled, shunned even by the kid, still a stranger to the villagers. About halfway through the film he tries to take photos of a village woman, but she won't allow it ; right at the end he tries again (with a different woman), and this time he succeeds - but is it because he's become accepted or is it the reverse, because he can never be more than just a tourist? Is he rather like Kiarostami himself, photographing a picturesque "reality" always from the outside, always as a rather eccentric visitor from the big city, making films his subjects never even see (having no cinemas in their villages)? How real can such a reality be, anyway? The film doesn't answer these questions - and the director himself, as it turned out, was scarcely more illuminating...

Kiarostami interview coming soon. Watch this space...

"Reality" was the big theme here, no doubt about it. The reality of Kiarostami's 'innocent' villagers, of ROMANCE and Co.'s explicit, 'unsimulated' sex, of the unadorned style in L'HUMANITE : in an age of media-overload we crave direct, unfiltered experience, non-manufactured emotions. Hence for instance THE COLOUR OF HEAVEN (28), which is like the ultimate in naturalism : its heroes aren't just kids (therefore fresh, unspoiled, media-innocent), aren't just Third World kids (ditto), they're blind Third World kids - they don't even know they're being filmed! At one point our young hero cries, and the film immediately steps in for a close-up - look, he's really crying - making it exploitative as well as cute and cloying, not to say shameless. We get slo-mo, shots of little hands in big hands, kids scampering down hillsides in bloom ; the boy may be blind, but it hardly matters - the hills are alive with the sound of ... well, you know, sounds. Woodpeckers, shit like that. There is, I admit, an effective ending - just when I was thinking director Majid Majidi had put himself in a no-win situation (two options, both equally unrewarding), he finds a third option and makes it work. But that's only in the last ten seconds.

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge...

Audiences loved it : in fact, Majidi's film was cited by virtually everyone I spoke to and all the coverage I saw (in the Greek papers, mostly) as the highlight of the whole Festival. Greek audiences are strange, unpredictable beasts - vociferous in their reactions, downright rude at times (guest of honour Amos Gitai, bringing his lengthy introduction of KADOSH to a gracious close : "Excuse me, I've talked too much perhaps..." ; Woman In Audience : "Yes, you have!"), yet easily charmed by the cute and feelgood. It augured badly for the Fest's (and the year's) greatest exercise in mock-realism, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (76), especially since (a) this was the Festival's Surprise Film, leading to heightened expectations, and (b) the noxious "scariest film ever" hype was already in full swing, anticipating the film's commercial release in early December. Predictably, a small minority in the audience grew first restive then openly derisive - a significant obstacle to enjoyment, especially for this particular film, which is so dependent on a claustrophobic atmosphere and the feeling of being trapped in a nightmare.

I have danced / Inside your mind / How can I be real?

It's not, of course, the "scariest film ever". I didn't think it was "scary" at all, actually, at least in the sense of any outside threat to the protagonists ; in fact, I doubt you can even call it a horror film - and suspect it would work almost as well (though it wouldn't have made any money) if the Blair Witch horrors turned out in the end to be figments of the heroes' imaginations. It's a psychological drama, reminding me of something I once read about Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, that it "strips these basically nice people emotionally bare" : BLAIR WITCH does the same, gradually reducing three basically nice young people to gibbering wrecks in a cruel, unrelenting and exceptionally powerful way - its box-office success is surely the result of hype and lucky timing, for this is neither a crowd-pleaser nor a spooky ghost story. Yet it's often fascinating, not least for its games with 'reality', which is what it purports to be (and arguably is, seeing as it wasn't scripted) : film-making, says one of its heroes, is a kind of "filtered reality", a way of controlling reality through shooting and editing - the heroine's compulsive film-making is a kind of escape, keeping the horrors at bay, trying to keep control. Yet her film-making becomes reality for us, even as the 'reality' around her remains part of the film-making. The film works partly because it's 'real', in the sense that these actors weren't in control, had no script to fall back on - what makes it are the details in the midst of terror, like the heroine's hair getting caught in the camera even as she's shaking with fear. We see that and extrapolate its 'reality' to the rest of the film - but do we even know if it really got caught, or if someone thought it would add verisimilitude for it to get caught (or for her to say it got caught)? And does it really matter anyway, seeing as it's all (yes) just a movie?...

Guess I'll always be a soldier of fortune

BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is terrific, possibly revolutionary, but it was a relief to go from the Chinese boxes of the various reality-vs.-illusion films to the poetic abstractions of BEAU TRAVAIL (67), which makes no claims whatsoever to reality or realism. It also makes no particular claims to narrative film-making and, once you've adjusted to that, it's tremendous fun : the nominal plot transposes "Billy Budd" to the Foreign Legion - though with the emphasis apparently changed a little, so the Claggart and Billy figures are (implicit) rivals for the Captain's affections - but the theme is male competitiveness generally, physical and emotional (and it's certainly apt to find Nicolas Duvauchelle, alias LE PETIT VOLEUR, among the Legionnaires). The soldiers train furiously, narrow-mindedly committed to the Legion (their "family"), oblivious to the natural beauty around them (it's set in Djibouti on the East Coast of Africa, a country of rocks and sea, sandy-brown and cobalt-blue) ; meanwhile the locals, many of them with their own (real) families, look on bewildered, chewing khat and swaying to the seductive rhythms of African music. The film's virtues are difficult to express, having to do with sensuality and rhythm, elegance and use of music (especially when a single note throbs almost inaudibly low on the soundtrack), and such things as a close-up of a pulsating muscle on Denis Lavant's arm ; it's also unmistakably tongue-in-cheek, and you often get the feeling (female) director Claire Denis is killing herself laughing at the poker-faced huffing and puffing of these pointless male rituals (not to mention the very last scene, with Lavant doing a deadpan, utterly self-absorbed high-energy routine to - of all things - Corona's bad-pop classic "Rhythm Of The Night"). The film is indeed hugely enjoyable - but, alas, narrative is what anchors a movie in the memory : this one seems to have evaporated, so I can't really reach for a 70+ rating. Can't wait to see it again, though.

Which is also my reaction to another wonderful deadpan comedy, Otar Ioselliani's ADIEU, PLANCHER DES VACHES (70), which kicks off like MY MAN GODFREY then develops into a Tati movie with the gregarious soul of a Renoir. All very complicated, but I knew I loved this movie within the first ten minutes when a large stork-like bird (egret? pelican?) was solemnly introduced to a big society party, walking with slow dignity and nodding its beak at the assembled guests. The film focuses on the rich family's teenage son, who secretly takes off for the city every day - doing menial jobs, chatting up the girls, writing the text for his beggar friend's help-board - building to a 'day in the life of Paris' series of gags, going from character to character. A Balkan family roam the streets selling religious icons. A veterinarian excuses himself at regular intervals to clip the ear of his violin-playing grandson. An African couple appear in full ceremonial dress, making chit-chat. Our hero's (literally) high-flying mother roams the skies overhead, clinching business deals by helicopter. Meanwhile his father (played, significantly, by Ioselliani himself) stays on the estate, attended by a cadaverous butler, shooting at clay pigeons and quaffing excellent white wine - and it's surely no coincidence that he looks so much like Boudu, or that he pals around with an old clochard and takes off in a boat at film's end.

The film's Renoiresque loose tone and love of people are a joy to behold, and Ioselliani is a master of the sly less-is-more gag, playing out his jokes behind half-closed curtains and soundproof windows ; but, again, the looseness backfires slightly. The epilogue suggests an elegy - neighbourhoods breaking down, human contact disappearing - and the film's too casual to support that, not quite structured enough to achieve the desired poignancy. Still, I found it quietly exhilarating. Michel Ciment - French uber-critic of "Positif" fame, in town as a member of the Jury - called it "the work of a poet" ; I thought it the work of a bon viveur and old reprobate, which is even better.

Half-hour interview with Michel Ciment. (Feel free to skip it if you like.) Bookish, courteous, early-60s. Opinions based on half an hour's acquaintance not too reliable, but he struck me as one of the very few world-class intellects I've ever come across - not what he said necessarily, intelligent though it was, but the ease and fluency with which he said it. Sits down, raring to go - "Is that on?" pointing at the tape-recorder - gives me his undivided attention for half an hour, never at a loss for words, then nods courteously and moves on, giving the impression he's barely broken sweat, could've talked equally fluently for another hour. Not too surprising I suppose, given that he's talked about movies every day for about 40 years. Still impressive, though...

TP : The Internet has led to a massive democratisation in film criticism in recent years - yet the critical Establishment continues to ignore it. What's your personal view of the Internet? Do you think it can have a role to play in how people access film criticism?

MC : Obviously, it will - it is already. I don't have the Internet myself, so I can't really judge, but my feeling is there's definitely some potential. Of course, the magazine of which I am an editor, "Positif", has welcomed so many new writers every year - people who've never been published before, who send us articles and we print those articles - so there are lots of chances for writers to be published [ even outside the Internet ]. But I think it's certainly an outlet, it's obvious it will have an important part to play, though I don't know if it will replace the printed word in the near future. After all, when we publish a new article [ at "Positif" ] it's read by an editorial board who listen to it and judge if it is worth publishing, and make whatever corrections need to be made before it gets printed - but if you are 16 or 17 and you're reading articles on the Internet, you can't trust them, they might be full of mistakes. I was in contact with the Internet recently through friends, because of the new edition of my book on Kubrick, and I was sent copies of things written about Eyes Wide Shut. I must say there was some interesting stuff, though nothing that was absolutely stunning, or very new - but I found it very lively. But, you see, I was very experienced, because I knew almost everything they were talking about, so I could sort out immediately what was true, what was junk, what was interesting, what was not interesting - because I've studied Kubrick for 40 years. But on most subjects I wouldn't be as much of an expert : if I read something on the Internet about Indonesian cinema, I don't know if it's true or not. So I still believe in the greater trustworthiness of serious film magazines.

People are worried it'll bring down the standard - because everybody with a computer can now be a film critic...

Yes. It's the same with cinema - now everyone can make a film, which will make it even more difficult for critics and festival directors, who will be sent so many cassettes by new directors. It will be the same as literature in fact, because literature is like that - anybody can send in a manuscript to a publisher, the problem is that very few are chosen. Making a film will be like writing a novel - there will be as many film-makers as there are novelists, there won't be the barrier of finding a crew, budget, producers, there will be a lot of home movies. But there will be the same problem as there is for novelists. Maybe film-makers will end up releasing their films through the Internet. It's science-fiction - and a little awesome at the same time, because it will be so difficult to choose...

But for example literature has bookshops, where people can browse through books and get an idea of what's out there. In films, the only real middleman is the critic. Is film criticism developing in a way that can handle this new world?

I think in general, all over the world, film reviewers have had their space immensely reduced - but, on the other hand, we have many more magazines starting up now, we have more and more books about film, more and more theses and university classes. The problem is that all this is small compared to the huge power of television, which for most people today is the only true channel of information - and television has totally eliminated cinema reviewing, there's no such thing as criticism on television.

We hear a lot today about the 'death of cinephilia' . Do you think there's something in that, or is it just the nostalgia of a generation that refuses to grow old?

Yes, I disagree totally with those people - I don't think they go to the movies anymore, I think they're uninformed. I think the idea that cinephilia is dead, that cinema has no more great directors is just nonsense - though I think cinephilia is very different today. Looking at my generation for example, when I first started going to the cinema - well, first of all it was 50 years ago, so the history of cinema was only half what it is today. Second, we had a very limited geographical circle, because for instance the Asian cinema was practically unknown - Kurosawa, a little Mizoguchi, but that's all. We were seeing only Western films. And it was also a kind of cinephilia that was common with everybody - we had the same references, we had all seen Potemkin or Passion Of Joan Of Arc or Buster Keaton, and we all went to the same cinemas, there were about 12 -15 arthouse cinemas where we would gather on the pavement afterwards and discuss what we'd seen. And of course we all had exactly the same backgrounds. Today it's very different, today cinephilia has exploded, gone off in many different directions - today people are making magazines only about Asian cinema! So of course a young man speaking to another young man may not find they have much in common anymore. Yet at the height of so-called cinephilia in the 1960s "Positif" was selling about 2000 copies - now we're selling four times as much, which proves that people are interested to read and inform themselves, to look at critical analysis. In fact, a lot of readers of film criticism today know more about cinema than the people who write about it - which was certainly not the case 40 years ago!

But aren't there people who believe films started with Star Wars?

Oh yes, the majority. But even in the 50s and 60s, cinephiles were a very small group. My worry is not about the small number of people who know about films - they are still alive, as they always were. My worry is about the general public - and the general public has much less knowledge of cinema than the general public of 40 years ago who, even if they weren't hardcore cinephiles, still went to the Film Society for a Polish film or Brazilian film - there was a Film Society in every high-school, every town. Today the larger public is being totally educated through television and mass entertainment, and they hardly know anything except Hollywood films - and I think that is the larger worry.

Is that because art-films have grown more difficult than they used to be?

No I don't think so - I think it's because television is feeding everyone from the age of 4 with a certain type of cinema, and because of the marketing power of the Hollywood companies. Like I say, 40 or 50 years ago people had seen a variety of art-films through the Film Societies and they'd gotten used to them, so if a new Polish or Japanese film came out they'd go to see it. Now they have no background in that kind of film, no culture. If someone saw only Hollywood films and at the age of 30 decided to see L'Humanité they would probably think it's too much - it takes a long time to get an education. Thirty years ago if they went to Antonioni they'd already have seen Bresson, Mizoguchi - therefore they could take Antonioni. Now, from age 5 to 25 they're fed only on Hollywood films and they suddenly arrive in front of Hou Hsiao-Hsien - impossible! But, at the same time - because these things are always very complex - at the same time I agree that world cinema, non-American cinema -

Has become more challenging?

No, has become less challenging. Except for a few masters - Angelopoulos, Kiarostami, there's about 15 of them around the world - what I see is that, first of all, many countries don't produce films any more, Eastern Europe for example, and others, like Italy, have been much reduced. So maybe if arthouse cinema had more great personalities, maybe general viewers would go to see the films - but they don't.

Have film festivals become more important as an alternative circuit?

Yes, I think so. I think festival directors have replaced critics to some extent - the role of the critic used to be to travel and bring back stuff, now they sit in their chairs waiting for the festival directors to bring them the films. Festival directors are critics in their own right - they don't write but they choose, and their selections influence public taste : what they choose will be seen, what they don't choose won't be.

What are the best films you've seen this year? Any masterpieces?

Well, there are a number of films I really liked. Eyes Wide Shut of course - I try to be as objective as possible but I do think it's an exceptional film, very under-rated. [How different would the final 'final cut' have been?] We'll never know. The editor told me that Kubrick told him they only had about two days' work left, so I think it's more or less the film we saw. I certainly don't think it's too long, I think the film is extremely well-structured and every sequence in it has an echo in another sequence - it's a very constructed movie, like Barry Lyndon, so I don't see what could have been eliminated. Other films - to stay with American films - I liked The Straight Story, I think it's a very good film. [You don't think it's a bit reactionary?] On the contrary, I think it's a revolutionary film - in America today, to make a film about an old man who's poor, when America is totally attuned to the young people and the rich people, I think that's a revolutionary act. So many films that are supposed to be revolutionary, films like Trainspotting, are actually very conventional - they're a lot more about catering to the audience, about fashion and money, than a film like The Straight Story, which is a totally aristocratic film. So in the American cinema these are the two films I'd mention - I love Felicia's Journey, but it's Canadian probably. I liked L'Humanité - I think it's overlong and a little self-indulgent, but it's extremely well-shot, the man is a real artist - and Adieu, Plancher Des Vaches, I think it's a wonderful film. I liked of course Kiarostami's film a lot, Jane Campion's new film - very provocative, totally wild - Almodovar, though I don't think he's a great artist of the cinema, Le Temps Retrouvé, which was flawed but so original ... What I find distressing is when young people make a first film, and so often the films are deja vu, they're films I've seen a hundred times already.

You watch so many films. Do you find that tends to alienate you from the mass audience?

My job is not to speak with the mass audience. I don't know what the audience wants, I'm not a Hollywood producer. I think a critic should be like an artist - an artist should think about himself, hope that the audience will like it but do what he wants to do, not think 'I will do something that they will like'. And I think a critic is the same. My job is to love a film and speak frankly about what I like, even if I know that by loving this film I might alienate some people, who might think it's too intellectual. I don't care! What I want is to promote what I feel is the best in cinema. I may make a lot of mistakes - but at least they are my mistakes...

M. Ciment was of course in Thessaloniki as a member of the Jury, a rather distinguished bunch headed by Tonino Guerra and including Elaine Cassidy (a.k.a. Felicia) and Hungarian director Janos Szasz. Unfortunately the Festival remains less than prestigious compared to its more established brethren, and the films in Competition (14 in total) were generally a weak bunch, Cannes and Venice having taken dibs on the more distinguished titles.

I saw only five, and four of them made little impression - or, in the case of HUMAN TRAFFIC, made the wrong impression. RETURN OF THE IDIOT (44), for example, a well-thought-of Czech movie, proved rather insubstantial, not least because its "Idiot" isn't an idiot savant, just kind of quiet and childlike. Fair bit of charm in the early scenes, but it bogs down in bland dialogue and muddled characters ; my abiding memory is of the American journalist sitting in front of me, who somehow managed to scribble notes throughout the movie, furiously filling his note-pad while I barely managed a couple of lines (maybe he was noting all the references to Dostoyevsky's original "Idiot", which I admit I haven't read). QUI PLUME LA LUNE? (46), similarly, proved intermittently charming and finally forgettable. Jean-Pierre Darroussin (UN AIR DE FAMILLE) is an eccentric father, Garance Clavel (WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY) his long-suffering daughter ; she's good at looking flustered, he's good at looking comically depressed, and they both do quite a lot of it - but I remember only a delightful final shot, an encounter with a bull, and a bunch of people in chicken suits. Festivals'll do that to you.

Davy's turning handouts down / To keep his pockets clean

But, like I said, they're also good at throwing surprises at you where you least expect them. THE DREAM CATCHER (64), also in Competition, seemed a bit of a chore : an American indie about a pair of teenage runaways on the road in the Midwest. Encounters with queer-bashers and Christian fundamentalists, check. Symbolic inserts of trapped birds fluttering in cages, check. But the film is fresh and dry, not always subtle but always restrained : a fist-fight is rendered near-silent, sounds of flesh broken only by the overheard hum of Latin music, low in the background ; the boys' attempts to reunite with estranged parents end ingloriously. Writer-director Ed Radtke doesn't have a sentimental bone in his body - but he's smart enough to know that movies thrive on energy, and finds it in the irresistible person of newcomer Paddy Connor as 15-year-old Albert, the younger of the two boys. Connor, blond and rubber-faced, has the goofy persona of the young Mickey Rooney, energising Radtke's dry precision via hyperactive good humour. Albert clowns around, talks incessantly, falling in cheerfully with whoever they happen to meet, wearing the uniform of wherever they happen to be - an altar-boy's robes when they crash in a church, a king-size Stetson when they pass through a fair. He is of course searching for identity, not to mention being kleptomaniac and self-destructive, but he has the carefree openness of childhood : deputised to steal food from a school canteen he steals a jar of pickles, shamefacedly sneaking the occasional pickle as Freddy, the truculent older boy (a.k.a. "Gloomy Man"), berates him for irresponsibility. Clearly, not all coming-of-age movies have to be EMPORTE-MOI.

Everybody knows the war is over / Everybody knows the good guys lost

Connor, looking startlingly older than in the movie, received a Special Mention for his work ("more than a prize," said president Guerra unconvincingly), and charmed the Closing Night audience by confessing he'd only come to Thessaloniki "for the drinking", never thought he'd win anything : "I love this town!" he whooped, and we cheered along since he obviously meant it (plus he's American, and Americans can get away with that kind of thing). DREAM CATCHER also got a Mention for cinematography, but the rest of the prize-giving went sadly awry far as I'm concerned, culminating with Justin Kerrigan netting Best Director (for HUMAN TRAFFIC) and First Prize, the "Golden Alexander", going to Zhang Yang's SHOWER (41), a message-mongering comedy set in a Chinese bath-house. The bath-house represents community, humanity, a slow pace of life, an old-fashioned China (real or imagined) where people made time for each other ; the owner's son, representing the new 'progressive' China, takes showers instead, because they're fast and convenient ; and, just in case we missed the point, the bath-house is about to be torn down, to make way for a shopping mall. This is cutesy stuff, briefly likeable for its colourful old codgers but overdone and manipulative. It scooped the Audience Award as well, which is understandable (seeing as it's a crowd-pleaser) - but what Ciment and Co. were thinking in giving it the gold is beyond me. Politics, perhaps?...

This is not my beautiful house / This is not my beautiful wife

It may have put me in an ugly mood for the Closing Night movie, AMERICAN BEAUTY (49) - which I actually liked considerably less than a 49, only the torrent of unanimous praise it's received makes me afraid I've missed something. Certainly I was in the minority on the night I saw it : "Not just the best film of the Festival, the best film of the year," declared the young chap sitting behind me (who'd earlier discussed the oeuvre of composer Thomas Newman with his neighbour, so he was clearly more than a casual filmgoer). Still, I didn't like it. In fact, I actively disliked it. In fact I thought it was a hateful film - hollow, smug, rancid. But it's difficult to say exactly why - or rather, it's difficult to raise objections that couldn't also be turned into commendations. It starts as one thing - broad, raucous satire, encouraging us to laugh at the characters - and ends as another (thoughtful drama, encouraging us to feel for them) ; but isn't that a good thing, testifying to its complexity? It hands out free passes to drug-dealing, voyeurism and blackmail while clucking its tongue at materialism and homophobia. But isn't that long-overdue, with so many movies doing the opposite?

I guess. But it still bothers me that the film laughs at some of its characters and not others. For example : both our hero (Kevin Spacey) and his wife (Annette Bening) start the film at a dead-end, then manage to rejuvenate their lives. Both rejuvenations seemed equally silly - or, of course, equally valid - whether it was Spacey going back to the 70s, Pink Floyd on the hi-fi and "mellow high" in hand, or Bening getting off on the power of firing a gun and the vicarious power of torrid sex with the "Real Estate King". Yet the former was presented as a triumph - leaving the rat-race, doing 'his own thing' - while the latter was a joke, an extension of the phoniness in American society. Why? Why the double standard? Is it so difficult to accept that different people need different things? There's a scene where Bening comes home after a session with her King, and Spacey - lying on the couch, beer in hand - tries to re-kindle their love life : what would make sense, dramatically, is for the couple, both of them rejuvenated, to end up having sex (optional side-gag : the 'new' Bening insists on being on top). But, though Bening complies at first, she can't help panicking about Spacey spilling beer on the couch, ruining the mood, and the moment passes. Excuse me, Mr. Mendes - I don't get it. You start off with a character who's the broadest of caricatures - she cut down a tree because "a substantial portion of the root structure was on our property," she tells her husband, and let's face it, nobody talks like that. You give this caricature certain new experiences. Do those experiences change her or don't they? If not then why not - and why give them to her in the first place? If they do, why not show those changes - why harp on about her materialism (after all, it is an expensive couch), why insist that she become a different person altogether before letting her into the cool people's club?

Is the film saying that being materialistic can never make you a good person, whatever happens in your life? (Sounds a little Stalinist to me.) And what about the other side of the coin? Does fitting in with the film's agenda make you a kind of super-being? What about the character played by Wes Bentley, for example? He's the perfect candidate for victimisation - not just an abused misfit, but a misfit abused by a US Marine father (Chris Cooper, doing miracles with an awful role), and indeed a misfit abused by a US Marine father who watches Ronald Reagan movies on TV! But does he have to be so together, for instance, so organised and self-confident (in a way that abused misfits rarely are, in my limited experience)? And does he have to be so sensitive? Is it necessary to give him the line about "so much beauty in the world" when he shows Spacey's daughter the video of the wind-blown plastic bag? Couldn't he just have been some weirdo who likes to film weird stuff, and the sensitive line have come from her (which might've given her character something to do, for one thing)? And what about the American Beauty herself, the teenage temptress played by Mena Suvari? Spacey's obsession with her seems to be a kind of masochism - he wants to be humiliated by this perfect, ruthless creature he can never attain, who represents everything he can never be - but was it necessary to turn the tables so cheaply and unconvincingly at the end? Wouldn't it make more sense if she stayed the same but he decided he didn't want her, like Dudley Moore at the end of "10"? Ah, but that might rob the film of its soft centre - might give heartless careerism its due, instead of collapsing it to reveal the face of a frightened child ; fittingly for the Age of Tony Blair, this is a film that kills with compassion.

What bothers me about AMERICAN BEAUTY is, I suppose, its superficiality, and the way it preserves a sitcom slickness (there's even a little lightener-line in the final voice-over!) and basically corporate sensibility (couldn't phone numbers not begin with 555, just this once?) while pretending to a satire of capitalist mores. At least OFFICE SPACE, despite (or because of) its crumminess, felt like a non-studio movie : this feels like it was made by people who've been "projecting an image of success at all times" since they were ten years old, work seven days a week, kowtow to the System - so of course they loathe conformity and worship tolerance, sensitivity, "dropping out", worship them with the blind, simplistic certitude they bring to the rest of their lives. Like the human-rights campaigner said in GREGORY'S TWO GIRLS - a film infinitely less arrogant and mean-spirited - "People who have all the good things own the best opinions too."

My life is just a party / And parties weren't meant to last

Still, as I made my way back to the hotel, my anger mollified by a cup of coffee and a large slice of chocolate cake, I wondered just how awful the film really was. Could it be, I mused, that the experience of watching nothing but art-films for ten solid days - an unprecedented experience for me - had somehow jiggled my film-going synapses a little, made me more impatient with broad strokes and surface glitter? And if so, how long would it last? Would a diet of noxious trash bring me back to my senses in a couple of weeks, making me look on the likes of AMERICAN BEAUTY as manna from heaven? Could it be, in fact, that writing film reviews on a weekly basis (as I've done for the past couple of years) stunts your development cinematically speaking, blunts the aesthetic senses? I came back from Thessaloniki feeling sharp and lean, determined not to let my system get clogged up again. Will I manage to watch only classics and 'serious' films from now on? Will I further my intellectual development? Will I find my true calling as a heavyweight film-critic? As Paddy Connor so unanswerably put it in THE DREAM CATCHER, "Lighten up, man..."

5:30 wake-up call for the early-morning flight to Cyprus. "See you next year!" says the desk-clerk as I stagger out looking for a taxi. First rays of dawn already softening the darkness. Pleasant flight, storms seem to have passed. Read on the plane. Halfway through Tolstoy's "Resurrection" - hero's found himself, found new meaning to his life, seems to have recovered his ideals. Cool...

Copyright Theo Panayides 1999